Final Harry Potter literacy night in Lee’s Summit inspired family reading
Michael Russell wants kids to say, “Alohamora,” to their books. With the third and final Harry Potter Literacy Night of the year, the Lee’s Summit North librarian drew upon the kids’ enthusiasm for the characters to promote reading.
The event drew 29 kids and 10 parents from the Lee’s Summit School District to the high school library for various themed activities, food and a screening of “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.”
Russell said he’s been holding the events for students in the Lee’s Summit School District for six or seven years. At the time it started he and the students in the school’s book club had been part of a program where they gave dictionaries and atlases to third-graders.
He wanted an event that would allow the younger students to spend time in the high school library.
“The third-graders look up to high school kids. It’s really fun to see that reaction,” Russell said. “It became Harry Potter because that’s so universal. It’s something that everybody kind of loves.”
At the event, kids could make buttons with Harry Potter images on them, take photos with a green screen and insert themselves into a scene from the films. Also on the agenda was a station for building ornaments in the house colors from the book series and constructing golden snitches using Ferrero Rocher candy.
“They have fun with the idea that everybody reads, and it’s cross-generation. The students who come tend to show up wearing Harry Potter merchandise. You can dress like a muggle if you want, but we welcome you to wear house colors,” Russell said.
Jenna Speer, 9, wore her Ravenclaw robes to the screening.
“I like how it’s always about fictional things, and they make it look so real,” she said. “I really like the books, because I like to read a lot.”
Russell baked batches of Potter-themed sweets, including chocolate frogs and fizzing whizbees (chocolate with Pop Rocks in it), to sell for concessions alongside the more traditional movie popcorn and candy. The proceeds from the concessions will help the high school students who volunteered at the event pay for schools trips to Ireland or Japan.
Russell often leads student trips. On a recent one to the United Kingdom, he took a group of students to the Warner Brothers studio tour of the sets from the Harry Potter films.
Whenever he travels, Russell picks up editions of the Harry Potter books in different languages, and at the literacy event, he had a table full of them in Czech, Japanese, Spanish and many more languages.
High school kids worked the concessions, helped out with the activities and looked after the kids whose parents dropped them off as part of a parents’ night out program. Usually, parents stay for the event, but the drop-off was a new feature Russell was testing for the first time.
“I think they have a lot of fun working with younger students,” Russell said. “The high school students don’t really see themselves as role models up until the point that a third-grader is looking at them like an adult. They really quickly see that, ‘Oh, I’m an adult, I’m helping with the younger kids.’”
Because of licensing restrictions, only students who attend school in the Lee’s Summit School District were allowed to attend.
“Our ultimate hope is that kids enjoy coming to the high school library,” Russell said. “It’s an early introduction to this space. It inspires them to read as a family and continue that love of reading for their entire life.”